EU’s latest message to Israel – “Do your worst without fear of sanction by us”
The first question the headline begs is this: What is, or rather what could be, Israel’s worst?
In my opinion the short answer is this. In an effort to defuse the demographic time-bomb of occupation and close the Palestine file for ever, Israel resorts to a final round of ethnic cleansing, to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan and other neighbouring Arab states. (What about the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip prison camp? They are left to rot and will suffer the same fate as their West Bank brothers and sisters if they chose to stay and dare to threaten Israel’s security).
Understanding the full extent of the complicity of EU ministers and their governments in Israel’s defiance of international law does not require a lot of effort.
On 5 July, Oxfam released its latest report, On the Brink: The Impact of Settlements on Palestinians in the Jordan Valley. Its findings included the following.
“Settlements and related Israeli policies, such as systematic demolitions and restrictions on land and water use, are creating a wretched reality for Palestinians in the Jordan Valley…
Palestinian communities are under threat as settlement expansion and demolitions escalate… Palestinians can use just 6 percent of the land in the Jordan Valley, while Israeli settlers, who account for just 13 percent of the valley’s people, have control over 86 percent of it… Settlements in the Jordan Valley, illegal under international law, have established industrial farms that produce high value crops for sale in markets locally and abroad, and are supported by a range of Israeli government grants and subsidies that facilitate their growth and sustainability… At the same time, the poverty rate for Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley is nearly double that of the rest of the West Bank as many struggle to make a living from farming and animal rearing without adequate access to land.”
The Oxfam report also noted that it’s not only in the Jordan Valley that the pace of Israeli land theft is quickening. 2011 saw a 20 percent rise in new settlement construction across the whole of the occupied West Bank as compared to 2010. Over the same period, the number of Palestinians displaced by demolition doubled, with 60 percent of the demolitions carried out in areas close to settlements.
(To add to their assertion that God gave them the right to plunder Palestinian land, the settlers now have the endorsement of an earthly authority – the Levy Committee. Under the chairmanship of former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, it was set up earlier this year by Prime Minister Netanyahu to establish whether or not outposts constructed by settlers without government authorization were legal. The 89-page report of the Levy Committee ruled that they are “because Israel does not meet the criteria of ‘military occupation’ as defined under international law.” Jonathan Cook described this denial of Israeli occupation as “preposterous”. I go further. I think it is irrefutable proof of a Zionist mindset that is deluded to the point of clinical madness).
The Oxfam report called on the member states of the European Union, Israel’s largest trading partner, “to take urgent action to press the government of Israel to immediately stop building settlements and end the demolition of Palestinian structures, including homes, animal pens, water cisterns, and solar panels.”
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